Anne Applebaum - Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

Copyright 2012 by Anne Applebaum

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Group Ltd, London, in 2012.

www.doubleday.com

DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Cover design by Michael J. Windsor
Cover illustration akg-images/ullsteinbild

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Applebaum, Anne
Iron curtain : the crushing of Eastern Europe, 19441956 / Anne Applebaum.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Europe, EasternRelationsSoviet Union. 2. Soviet UnionRelationsEurope, Eastern. 3. Europe, EasternPolitics and government19441989. 4. Europe, EasternSocial conditions20th century. 5. Communist countriesPolitics and government. 6. Communist countriesSocial conditions. 7. CommunismEurope, EasternHistory20th century. 8. CommunismSocial aspectsEurope, EasternHistory20th century. 9. Political cultureEurope, EasternHistory20th century. 10. Political persecutionEurope, EasternHistory20th century. I. Title.
DJK45.S65A67 2012
947.0009045dc23
2012022086

eISBN: 978-0-385-53643-1

v3.1

This book is dedicated to those Eastern
Europeans who refused to live within a lie.

The loss of freedom, tyranny, abuse, hunger would all have been easier to bear if not for the compulsion to call them freedom, justice, the good of the people Lies, by their very nature partial and ephemeral, are revealed as lies when confronted with languages striving for truth. But here all the means of disclosure had been permanently confiscated by the police.

Aleksander Wat, My Century

Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie.

Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless

Abbreviations and acronyms were widely used to describe many different kinds of political organizations in the era described in this bookthe Soviet Union had a kind of mania for thembut they can be very confusing for the general reader, particularly as they changed quite often. I have therefore avoided them as much as possible, often using communist party in place of Polish United Workers Party, for example, or communist youth group instead of FDJ or ZMP. Still, it was impossible to avoid them altogether, and they are often used in other history books and memoirs. This is a list of the most important.